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Get the Most Out of Stock Photos With These Three Tips

Graphic of Polaroid with title Stock Images: Get the most out of your stock photos with these three tips!

Whether you are using stock photos for social media, your blog posts or your website, knowing these tips to get the most out of your search will help make your content more original. Here are 3 things to keep in mind when searching through stock photos: 

Pay Attention to Trends In Stock Photos 

Trends are constantly changing, whether it’s fashion, social media, or even the phone we use, these trends can sometimes be easily identifiable in photos. When using stock photos, you want to be careful that the image doesn’t showcase an out of date trend, unless of course that’s what you would like to show. It’s critical to review the date of the stock photo and ensure it doesn’t look dated. A stock photo that was taken in 2010 will likely look very different from an image that was taken in 2020. For more trendy stock photo, we like to use Unsplash.com. This is a free stock image website that provides 2021 quality images.

Not All Images Need To Have Faces

Landscapes, everyday objects and images that don’t show the model’s face are great substitutes for when you aren’t able to take your own professional brand photography. We love and recommend using stock photos for social media stories. For example, if you want to share some responses from a question you asked on social media, you can use stock images of the answer topic for the background. This is a really easy way to get great visuals! 

Get Very Specific With Your Search 

Getting extremely specific with your search on websites such as 123rf.com or Adobe Stock help you get the images you need and want, and limits the time spent sifting through images that aren’t reflecting your vision. When getting specific, try describing the people you would like to see, or the action that they will be doing. Another great reason to get specific is that you are more likely to find unique images, which will allow you and your content to stand out! 


The next time you need content and are looking to use Stock Images, try these tips! If you need help stepping up your social media game, book a discovery call with us!

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Make your Website Faster: The Importance of Website Speed & Performance

Graphic of "How to make your website faster"

Website speed is the number one determining factor for if a visitor will actually see your website. You already did the hard work of directing them to it. Don’t lose out on potential business by having a website that takes over 2 seconds to load.

Here are our recommendations for testing your website’s speed and then improving it.

Checking your website speed 

Web Page Test is a great free tool that you can use right now to check the speed of your site. 

Google Page Speed Insights is also an industry favourite. Just enter your website’s URL and it will calculate the speed for you. 

Are images slowing your website’s speed? 

Oversize images can drastically slow down the speed of your site. A good rule of thumb is that graphic files should be PNGs while image files should be JPEGs. If your images and graphic files aren’t right, then you can always upload them into Canva, and re-download them as the correct file. 

Another great way to change the type of file is by using a file converter, you can find a bunch of these on Google. Rosewood uses Converter & Bulk Resizer

Clearing your Website’s Cache

A cache is a storage location that collects temporary data to help websites, apps and browsers load faster. So when someone is returning to your website, it will load faster, since the cache automatically stored a bunch of useful information about your site on their first visit. Clearing your cache will help to increase your website speed. A great tool to use is SEO Site Checkup, it is free and will check your site’s cache for you.

Outdated Software, Plugins & Apps

Outdated software such as the core wordpress environment, or supporting plugins could also be another reason why your website has slowed down. If you don’t have the time to make these updates yourself, let Rosewood do it for you! Contact us to find out about our Maintenance plans. 

Website speed is a critical determining factor for who actually sees your website content. People won’t wait around for ever. Make sure your website loads quickly, fully and securely for potential visitors.  Your potential clients, and Google, will appreciate it! 

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Why Every Business Should Have a Blog (Following Best Practices!)

Man reading a blog about hiring a PPC Ads Manager in Newmarket

Last week we talked about content repurposing, and how you can turn one blog post into multiple pieces of content. This time, we wanted to talk about why your business should have a blog

There are two aspects to why you should be posting blogs: Technical and Business. 

Technical Reasons For Why You Should Have A Blog

There are two very important technical reasons why you should have a blog: Increase Your Organic SEO (i.e. Impress Google), and Backlinking.

  1. Increase Organic SEO, i.e. impress Google’s algorithms and backlinking. 
    Blogging is effectively the single best way to increase your website’s organic SEO. Your SEO, also known as “Search Engine Optimization”, determines your ranking in Search Engines for relevant search terms.

    When blogging, you can write in a way that boosts your SEO score, that allows both your blog and your website to appear closer, if not at the top of the results page while Googling. This is how you impress Google’s algorithms. Google wants to show the search results that are the most recent and most relevant to the search inquiry. Examples of ways to write to impress Google’s algorithms is to include focused key words. This blog is full of them! Can you guess what they are? 
  1. Backlinking
    Backlinking is essentially any time another reputable website publishes a link to your website. This could be as supplementary info to their blog (i.e. check out so-and-so’s blog for more information!).

    The more people that find your blogs useful and link it to their website, the better your website will perform overall. This is great motivation to not only write blogs that are good for your SEO, but also enjoyable and informational to the reader. 

Business Reasons For Why You Should Have A Blog

There are three business-related reasons why you should be blogging regularly: establish your business as the expert, resonate with readers via real-world applications/case studies and create content to be redistributed on other platforms.

  1. Establish Your Business as the Expert:
    Sharing your knowledge, industry news, tips and tricks, or even news about your business through effective blogging gives you the opportunity to have your clients, customers and industry peers recognize you as an expert in your industry. 
  1. Anecdotes, Case Studies and Projects
    By sharing anecdotes, case studies and projects, you’re allowing the reader an inside view into your operations. They may even touch on issues the reader is experiencing and outline a solution to their own problem. By blogging, you are resonating with your readers. 
  1. Repurpose Valuable Content Quickly & Efficiently
    Blogs allow for a wealth of content to be redistributed with a few extra clicks. You can quote your blog and turn snippets into Canva Graphics. Then post these on your Social Media and backlink to your blog (See what we did there?!) 

Overall, blogging is a great way to drive traffic to your website, which in return will help increase brand awareness and conversions (contact inquiries and/or e-commerce sales). We understand that blogging can be a daunting task, especially if you are learning on how to improve your SEO. Here at Rosewood, we offer blogging services for all business levels, whether it’s needing help improving your SEO or because you don’t have the time to blog, we have you covered. If you are interested in blogging, let’s get in touch!  

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